From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
Like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins
Melita wished she could say a chord of strings and verses to cease his pain, to varnish and wash it all away, for it to cease pervading through every breath and every step. Instead, she tugged him along and tried not to break apart herself, for the helplnessness, for the inability to do absolutely nothing but watch them fall into shambles, to crumble into themselves, to become immersed in confusion and self-torment. Why can’t you do anything curled inside her mind and clawed, scratched, tried to get its way out, but there was no use, and she was only a steady, stalwart thing bending around nooks and crannies, shuffling through the snow, keeping the tears held back.
Because she’d found him, at least. And that had to amount to something in this crazy, agonizing world.
A story was agreed upon, and she found herself making one up on the spot – nothing peaceful correlating to her brain at the moment, scattered amongst and amidst the memories. “There was a beautiful butterfly, and she was entranced by the loveliest of sounds.” Her sister; it could be like her sister, little Clementine, whose lantern was back home, and they were going to go there – every single god damned one of them. “One day, she heard a merry laugh, and she flew towards a field of the most beautiful flowers she had ever seen – but she didn’t stop. She kept following the refrains.”
do you feel at home? your flames are burning higher your circumstance is dire, don't panic. you're frantic
Just as slowly as his other had begun to falter the first time, Nate begins to drift, leaning closer and closer to Melita until their sides are nearly pressed together, until they’re close enough that Nate can swap the hand clinging to hears to wrap around her shoulders instead. Maybe he can’t offer warmth, but he can try and offer something, some closeness, some thanks. If she hadn’t found him, wasn’t leading him, what would he have done? Would he have been found? Would he have risen again?
But she had found him, she had him, and they were safe. They were going home. And the worst of his panic, the worries and fears plaguing him, were placated by a story. He could be simple, sometimes.
”What kinds of sounds?” Did she really expect to be able to tell a story without being interrupted, without Nate butting in. He loves to talk when he’s not sick, but now, with his filter all but nonexistent, whatever comes into his head just spews out his mouth. Though, if he could just be patient, he’d get his answers, much like the first one that came without any extra effort imparted by the first haired girl. ”Is this story like the um, the piper one?” And, most importantly, but quietest in his deluge of distracted curiosity: ”Is the butterfly okay?”
this is your hell, dancing for something that was true to you, how do you do? say it's me.
Like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins
“Like laughter. Merry, whimsical, peaceful.” What she wanted to hear, instead of the rampaging edges of damnation rushing for all of them. What Clementine had once uttered, along fields of wildflowers. What her mother once embodied, gently laying out herbs, hanging them to dry, protecting them with love and compassion. It was what she tried to instill now, in her own version, strength and might keeping them upright, moving, heading towards promised portals, and out of the snow. Out of danger. Out of the bone-weary exhaustion plaguing her mind.
But she didn’t know what other tale he was talking about, arching a brow. “What piper one? You can tell me after I finish?” They could share on this journey, occupy rampaging, burdened minds, re-forge, revitalize, revive everything that wanted to fade and die and shackle into tethers and lines where there was no end and no beginning.
Then he urged her to continue, so she did, a breath intermingling in warm puffs of air, in the strain on her soul, on the way she refused to break. “She followed the airy, ethereal qualities, until she found a cluster of Fae.” Sure, that sounded right. Even if all the ones she’d ever met had been hardened, battle-laden Amazons. “They spoke to her, told her to come closer.”
do you feel at home? your flames are burning higher your circumstance is dire, don't panic. you're frantic
Laughter sounds nice, something pleasant to follow, to be led along by. This feels like a nice story, despite the cynicism in Nate's mind, the exhausted and overworked sense of worry, of paranoia. But he wants, so badly, to be able to believe in it, to sink into a type of paradise. Maybe... maybe he can slip into the folds of Melita's voice, can trust her to lead him along a gentle path, when everything feels so dangerous. He nods briefly, accepting the answer, and turns forwards again, eyes finding the bobbing light of the lantern, the starwhal, and before them the mountain rising up and up. The cave can't be much farther now, can it?
So many things that had once been familiar are alien now, and Nate keeps forgetting, others don't know the things he does. Haven't grown up with them. Even others from Earth have been removed, their experiences vastly different. "I'll tell you." He promises. "It's not very long. Or... nice, really." A low huff of laughter leaves him before Mel is the centre of his focus again.
The mention of fae brings some sense of worry, another spark of panic that he can't remember the reason for, that Nate swallows down. "What do the Fae want?" Despite himself, his trepidations, he can't help the curiosity, can't help but want to know the next step, on the gentle story he's being led along.
this is your hell, dancing for something that was true to you, how do you do? say it's me.
Like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins
Melita wished she could occupy the expanse in the way her family once had – gentle, kind, a spirit of tenderness rather than fire and cinders, stoked and ready to burn. They’d been peace and sanctuaries, tranquility, serenity, while she tiptoed over wildflowers and rushed through fields, a brazen little ember waiting to spark. But here, here she could pretend, envision a time, a place, where naught was wrong and nothing went awry, where they lingered on their mother’s lap and giggled at the stories and myths surrounding them, while they dreamed about things that could’ve come true, had they just been given a chance. Here she could wile away the hour and appease a sickened friend, here she could do something out of the fog and listlessness, a desperation clawing inside her chest - can’t there be anything else? Fangorn’s light bobbed ahead, and she wondered if she could ever be that too – a guiding star, rising out of the ashes they all seemed to settle within.
Not nice stories didn’t have a place for the moment, and she almost growled at her own error at mentioning Fae. But it was too fargone now, and if Nate found discomfort in their shape or design, she sent a silent apology through wound fingers and bridged hands. Her heart, her mind, imagined a people not so hardened by strife or hatred, but by the spiritual essence of the forest – sharp, poignant, eerie, enigmatic, vines turning and twisting, boughs bending at their call, flowers blooming beneath their feet, whims and caprices of decadence, rather than spears and knives. “They invited her to dance in their circle.” Hadn’t that been an old tale? That they would dance and dance and dance for eternity? “The butterfly flew at the chance, and she was taken up in their steps, following the handholds and music.” Just a bit farther, and the portal would be there, and this would be just one more haze, one more forgotten nuance.
do you feel at home? your flames are burning higher your circumstance is dire, don't panic. you're frantic
Dancing. Just dancing. No trickery, no fire, no sizzling, burning blades. Nate feels himself relax, feels his shoulders drop and a breath he never would have noticed he was holding in leave him. Perhaps it is another avenue for threats and danger, perhaps if the story were real, if the fae were the ones who inhabited this world, but Melita is the master of fates for this tale. It will be nice.
Nate squeezes his nieces hand, brow furrowed while he thought, considered his words more carefully than he had before. ”I... like to dance.” Oh, but he wouldn’t be invited, would he? Not being what he was. A disappointed huff leaves his nose, and then he’s speaking again, prodding for more. ”What happens next?” If he could not be invited, then he could live vicariously through the story. Almost as soon as the words leave him, Nate begins to hum, a soft slow song, the kind that closes out a night, at the kinds of parties his grandparents threw.
this is your hell, dancing for something that was true to you, how do you do? say it's me.
Like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins
A light brewing of laughter curled and bloomed and plumed from her chest; might’ve been the thing of spirits and faeries, of sprites and figments of imagination, but she had to give credit to Nate and his notions of dancing. “Oh, you do? Are you going to dance at the wedding?” Visions of things to come, fruition and futures, where one could dream that they were plausible, that they would rise out of the circumstances, come back down to earth, loams, and soils, and not be distant, faded ambitions. She hummed along with him too, warbles and pitches to match, though hers were likely off-key, and not the right notes; but she’d always had a fondness for catching, latching, onto her sister’s, giggling while they rolled around in the grass, listening to birds sing, to the ethereal flourish of butterfly wings, to the gentle drone of bees buzzling near their crowns of laurels and flowers.
Her hand squeezed back, and they were drifting, drifting, drifting, ever closer to destinations and safety. She’d keep her promise and guide him home, and they’d all be beckoned towards Torchline masses and shorelines. They’d all be able to solve the latest mystery. They’d be well and whole, and she could believe it, scorch it into her blood. “She was able to remain in their dance circle for eternity, swept up in the wind, never having to worry about anything else. Free to leave, but never doing so – because it was so joyful.” Would that be enough? Could she imagine her sister in that stead, always bound to shelter, to whimsy, to music and paradise? “What was your story?”
do you feel at home? your flames are burning higher your circumstance is dire, don't panic. you're frantic
Laughter draws Nate's eye, cartoonish wide and blinking. Was he going to dance at the wedding? "What kinda question is that? Obviously I'm gonna dance. It's uh... tradition." Whether or not he'd known it before this moment, whether or not Sunjata knew it. The hum grew into a song between the two of them, Melita changing the tune in his head, making something new. And as they fade away, and the final leg of the story comes, Nate beams blithely ahead of them, the simple niceness a soothing balm on his mind. "It sounds like a nice place to be in."
His story though, is a fair bit more sombre than Melita's had been, has a far les shappy ending. "It was... the piper, the uh... the Pied Piper. Pied was his clothes, though, not pies." Shaking his head, Nate lets out a soft laugh. "He had a pipe, and he was so... wait, no thats not..." The story stops, long enough for Nate to shift his head back and forth, trying to shake the memory loose. "There once was a town called... there once was a town, and they had a uh, a rat problem. The one day, a piper came to town, and he said he could fix the rat problem, but the town had to pay him. Cause he was doing a job for them, obviously."
His garrulous story seemed to finally have found it's tracks, Nate's sharp eye thrown towards Melita, making sure she's listening. Before them, the mouth of the cave that houses the portal rises up, Nate hesitating at it's threshold, though this tim because he wants to finish his story, not because of any latent panic. "And they agreed, so he played his pipe, and he played it so good that all the rats followed him, and they left the town. And then you know what happened?"
this is your hell, dancing for something that was true to you, how do you do? say it's me.
Like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins
Something sounding like Nate’s old self seemed to come back to fruition on the drawn intake of laughter; and she breathed a little easier, approaching the portal designations with a renewed pace, a resurgence of rebellion. Things that could be conquered and overrun by sheer determination, power, and will, and the world wouldn’t stop her, wouldn’t cease her movements, wouldn’t make her cease until a final heartbeat pulsed in her chest. “Good. I’m looking forward to it.” Their wedding; something that sounded normal, something to replace the bizarre nuptials of Phoebe and Sunjata, of other ties and bonds needing to be severed. She said nothing of the ghostly, pale woman, who’d done naught but linger, branching along the hums and songs they seemed to coordinate together.
She tilted her head to listen to his story, watching Fangorn’s lantern light casting glows around vaguely familiar sights. Pied Pipers and pied clothes and nothing actually with pies made her nose wrinkle in confusion, but she waited, wondering if there’d be an explanation to it later on in the tale. A town with rat problems, with some infestation, and a man wanting to be paid for his work. Compensation. Understandable. The youth nodded, still holding his hand when he hesitated along the threshold of the portal, where her gourd waited, where home presided. But they couldn’t go without finishing the myth, and so she smiled again, an encouraging one. “He was paid? The rats came back?” The firecracker youth couldn’t be quite certain with these sorts, pondering if there was a life lesson embedded in them, or some cruel twist of fate.
do you feel at home? your flames are burning higher your circumstance is dire, don't panic. you're frantic
Shifting closer, Nate throws an arm around Melita’s shoulders, some part of him carful to not actually lean on her, to not make his steps her burden, any more than they already were. Not when his mood has shifted so much, when he feels almost light, with talk of dancing and weddings. ”I’m looking forward to it too. I am a little...” He stops himself before saying nervous, shaking his head instead. It’s going to be a good time. It’s going to be good for them.
A smile breaks over Nate’s face, not reaching his eyes as he shakes his head. ”The town decided since the rats were gone, and he was only one man, they’d run him out of town without paying him. And they did.” Another pause, for drama this time, because of course the story didn’t end there. It could barely be called a cautionary tale where he’d left it. ”But he was the very best pipe player, and he was going to get payed one way or another. So he came back to town, in the middle of the night, and he played. And all the children in the town left their beds, and they followed the piper. The same way the rats did. And none of them were ever seen again.” Ever with a dramatic flair, no sooner than the end of his story does Nate step wordlessly into the portal, all but falling sideways into the white mist.
Just a hop back to Torchline, a trek that Nate would never have made it in without Melita. He’ll have to thank her, properly, when he can.
~Fin
this is your hell, dancing for something that was true to you, how do you do? say it's me.
